


to fall down at your door

by mongaygay



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: M/M, but they love each other - Freeform, happy birthday minhyuk!, pirates! joohyuk, slightly violent descriptions, theyre morally questionable bc theyre pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-14 17:46:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16497293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mongaygay/pseuds/mongaygay
Summary: Minhyuk is a pirate and Jooheon’s the only home he’s ever known.





	to fall down at your door

**Author's Note:**

> For the #JoohyukBingo prompt: Ocean

" _You must know this. You're too smart not to know this. They paint the world full of shadows and then tell their children to stay close to the light. Their light. Their reasons, their judgments. Because in the darkness, there be dragons. But it isn't true. We can prove that it isn't true. In the dark, there is discovery, there is possibility, there is freedom._ "

 

_\- Black Sails_

 

Jooheon tastes of skin and sweat on his lips, and his chin resting on Minhyuk’s head feels like home.

 

They’re tangled on a too-small mattress, far too small, with Minhyuk’s head tucked under Jooheon’s, nuzzling into his neck, their legs barely retaining any feeling from how far they have been numbed out from the position. The only thing that lights up the room is the lamp resting precariously beside the windowsill, and if the slightest wind had come, if it had faltered by a centimetre, they would have been on fire. But Minhyuk’s fine if the last thing he kisses is the press of Jooheon’s neck onto his chapped lips. Besides, it’s comfortable, and even though Minhyuk can no longer feel his body, completely immobilised by the embrace, he’s okay if Jooheon is all he feels too.

 

Because Jooheon is home, and boy, had he been so goddamn _homesick_.

 

His fingers linger on the places where Jooheon’s beautiful golden skin raises and thins, the constellation of scars memorised so vividly in his mind that those galaxies could have led him home even in the daytime. He can name some of them, the day Jooheon got them, what caused it, who his brain placed a subconscious hatred on for letting his love down that day. A particularly jagged scar, stretched pale white over Jooheon’s right thigh, Minhyuk remembers as being the result of a neglectful boatswain, the giant doofus letting a sleep-deprived sailing master run past him into the fight. Of course by now, he’s long gone, defected to another ship, but Minhyuk holds a teensy weensy bit of a grudge, still. He draws circles around the skin and kisses deeper into Jooheon’s neck.

 

How could he ever have guessed that he would be doing this right now? He could never have thought, thinking 10 years into the future, that stowing away on his father’s merchant ship would have brought him here, cuddled in the arms of his sleeping lover in the world’s smallest cottage, the rain falling around them into the pitch black skies, with the faint sound of the angry sea booming distantly. He could never have thought that the sword-swinging, frightening young man with blood dripping from his mouth and a gun hanging on his waist would have been delicate enough to hold out a hand to the shaking young stowaway who didn’t look tough enough to be on a merchant ship, let alone a pirate ship, and still take him in.

 

The tips of his fingers then find the paper thin scratches that line Jooheon’s back, right above his waist and all the way up his spine. He remembers too vividly where those had come from, the excruciating pain he had felt even as he had been the one clawing at the poor sailing master’s back, his nails dragging pathetically through hard muscle and sweaty skin.

 

Oh, how he had cried then.

 

**_THEN_ **

 

“LET ME GO, YOU FUCKING MONSTER! THAT’S MY FATHER,” Minhyuk screams, his legs kicking wildly at Jooheon from where the other boy had hoisted him up and carried him away. His fists pound angrily onto his back, fighting weakly against being dragged from where the pirates surrounded his father tied up on the merchant ship’s mast. The ship had been taken days ago, but they had stayed on board, scrounging, searching, destroying, killing. His father had been tied up for as long as that, and at some point his knees had given way so only the tightly bound frayed cords around him kept him upright, his head lolling back and forth to the rocking of the ship.

 

It would have been too kind to just let him bleed out right there, and they are definitely not planning to.

 

Jooheon holds on tight where his arms are wrapped around Minhyuk’s waist, and Minhyuk struggles in the air, shouting himself hoarse. All he can hear is a ringing in his ear, the roaring of the waves, the cackling of the pirates, and he just feels _pain_. No matter what he does, he’s pulled further away from where he can see the crowd of rioting pirates converge on the merchant ship’s captain.

 

_Dad… Father… My father…_

 

He screams until his voice is gone, until his shouts turn into wet, pleading sobs, his words flitting into the air and disappearing where his hand met them, stretching desperately for the only family he has left.

 

And he’s so _angry_ , and so _fucking_ sad. All he knows to do is to cause as much pain as possible, trying to draw a reaction, any reaction, from the boy unsympathetically carrying him away. His fingers claw into Jooheon’s shirt, gripping, bunching it up, and then deeper, his nails drawing the most insignificant little scratches along his back. He just wants to hurt, and he wants to hurt something, something to feel what he can no longer feel of his face, salty with the tears that drip down his cheeks and gather at his chin, down his neck and further down. He shuts his eyes against the flood of ghastly images at the ship’s deck, small knives digging into raw flesh, his father crying out.

 

“No, no, no…”

 

His wrists give way, and he drops his head onto Jooheon’s shoulder, his scratches turning into defeated pawing at the other boy’s back. His weak cries of denial die into Jooheon’s chest and he is easily carried into the lower deck of the ship, deposited into a hammock closest to the windows. Jooheon lowers him inside, trying and failing to unclasp Minhyuk’s hands that refuse to let go from around his neck, leaning over him awkwardly for hours, begging him in whispers to forgive him.

 

_**NOW** _

 

Looking back on it now, Minhyuk thinks maybe Jooheon had cried that day.

 

Maybe not when he had been leaned over him, their sweaty foreheads pressed together, whispering soft pleas for forgiveness, his hands trailing down Minhyuk’s arms to find that their hands fit so perfectly together. Maybe not when he had been gritting his teeth, lifting a boy slightly taller than him away and trying to prevent him from getting killed. Maybe not even afterwards when he had crawled into the too-small hammock with him, when Minhyuk had been too drained to cry anymore and had all but passed out onto his chest.

 

Minhyuk thinks Jooheon cried that night, when the grunts and snores of every other crew member filled the ship, when the ship rocked a little too harshly in the storm, and in his fear, he finally got a moment to really think about the life he had been raised to live unquestioningly. He thinks they cried together that night, since he had woken up too with tear tracks burnt into his face the next morning.

 

The pads of his fingers might’ve calloused from how long they had been circling the same part of Jooheon’s body, so he moves on. There’s so much of him to explore, anyway. He drags a hand around to cup Jooheon’s stomach, soft and toned where there used to be tight muscle, and fights the urge to shift his position so he could kiss the other man’s tummy instead.

 

Jooheon doesn’t do that anymore, none of it. A terrible gash right there, the spot where Minhyuk’s hand had stopped and rested, had put him out of commission indefinitely, and he had never gone back. Even these days, living on a British-abandoned island infested with thieves and pirates, Minhyuk is the only semblance of his old life that he still kept up with. Minhyuk’s comings and goings and the new and old gashes and scars that ride up his thighs and arms and back are the only things that touch Jooheon from the brutality and filth of the life he had left behind, and Minhyuk is so grateful for it.

 

People like Jooheon were not meant to be pirates, to be scavengers and hunters and predators and thieves, and even though Jooheon had mainly ridden the sails, steering, guiding, hair flying in the hostile wind, Minhyuk has always known that the rusty pirate ship wasn’t where his loving, gentle Jooheon belonged. Jooheon is a wayfinder, a guiding light, the harbour to which tired vessels rode and crawled and he’s sand, not wind, not water, and he’s anchor, not sword, and he’s love. He’s everything that doesn’t belong on angry filthy pirate ships, behind the harsh billowing threats of black sails.

 

He’s more powerful for it.

 

These days, Jooheon spends his days in the garden out back, with his sleeves rolled up and shirt hanging open, pulling up weeds and watering the tiny amount of vegetables he had managed to plant. Most days he lugs his vegetables to the market and since most pirates and pirate-adjacents didn’t have the guts to negotiate against the prices set by the old sailing master and expert fighter of the Dreamer’s Defiance, he would make quite a steady (albeit somewhat measly) profit. He’d spend that money on food and necessities and on their little cottage, and he’d laugh and say it should spend it all on more vegetables next time so that Minhyuk would no longer have to work and they could both retire together.

 

Jooheon is the harbour, but sometimes Minhyuk still sees the rush, the roar of the tidal waves, the anger of the ocean flash in him. He feels it sometimes, when he comes back after a long time out at sea, weeks, months away from home, and is greeted by angry kisses, hands running all over his sunburnt skin, Jooheon all over him as though if he didn’t take all of him in now, he never could do that again. He’d squeeze his eyes shut, giving up after a while on keeping up with the kiss, and when he’d open them again, he’d be in their tiny bedroom with Jooheon’s perfect thighs on either side of his body, feeling Jooheon’s happy little sighs on his lips. Jooheon would be the waves then, rushing over him, gushing, overwhelming, and Minhyuk would be okay with that, more than okay, if it meant whenever he opened his eyes all he saw was Jooheon and the question of why he would ever dream of anything more.

 

And Minhyuk used to think of himself as fire, tearing through the air and bursting, flaming, to the skies that couldn’t wish to contain him. Now he sees that fire dies on sand, fizzes out, turns into black, blood red coal and ash where it used to be towering smoke and roaring golden flames. He is not fire, floating frightening and beautiful over the thundering waves, and he’s always just let the sea take him, drowning, sinking, fingers meeting the seabed below and still panting with victorious laughter. Despite that, or because of it, he’ll always find his way back to Jooheon, his lips parted in teasing defiance, his fingers tangling, locking, holding, falling into open arms with all the exhaustion of a tired sailor; he’d always come home.

 

 _Staying_ home is the hardest part.

 

After Jooheon had gotten him in with the crew of Dreamer’s Defiance, he had climbed the ranks quickly, exceedingly fast. Lee Minhyuk had gone from a disgraced merchant ship defector to the boatswain in a matter of weeks, slipping easily into the favour of the quartermaster and showing off his excess of skills that honestly had been no good on a merchant ship but carried so much weight with the pirates. He had to admit, it felt good to be so heartlessly free, the unending cruelty that hung in the air around him ironically freeing him. No one could tell him what to do when any conflict was easily solved by the slash of a sword or, later as he pulled further weight on the ship, just a well-placed _look_. He thought maybe he understood intoxication; when every snap of his finger came with all the weight of the world’s oceans behind him, it was hard to not keep snapping.

 

He had become quartermaster on the anniversary of his father’s death in the most cruel irony. When the old quartermaster had stopped frequenting the captain’s chambers and the crew had begun seeing the polished wood of the closed door more often the hearing the sounds of the two of them murmuring behind, something in Minhyuk had inspired him to try _his_ luck instead. He had just never realised just how fucking lucky he actually was.

 

_**THEN** _

 

“Captain, I feel like I haven’t seen you out and about in ages,” Minhyuk says, slipping into the room and sliding himself onto the table. The captain has his head in his hands and has been kicking his leg against the table for a while now, and Minhyuk can make out quiet sighs escaping from behind his palms. The one-legged man barely responds to his arrival and just pushes a bunch of leather-bound books off of the table as an absurd form of welcome as if Minhyuk needed any more space for him to sit his tiny ass down. Minhyuk leans over cautiously, making sure first that the captain's hand is not anywhere near his sword before placing his hands on his shoulders and sighing theatrically.

 

"Captain..."

 

He has no plan, whatsoever, obviously. He had just figured that out of all these geezers on the Dreamer's Defiance, there should be one that the Captain could depend on. And it definitely was no longer the quartermaster.

 

The quartermaster was... nice. He was nice. That's about all Minhyuk can respect about him, and even that might have been an overstatement. The quartermaster was a tall, broad man with about three hairs on his chin and no backbone at all, and while he was loyal to the Captain, one's unending faith can only bring him so far. About... this far, actually. Minhyuk wants to feel bad, trying to snatch a spot from the man who had been showing him favour, but he figures that the old master had been completely spent, by now, and from what Minhyuk has been noticing, he was no longer of use to the tired Captain.

 

Which means Minhyuk could be.

 

The Captain looks up with a worn-out expression on his face, and basically groans out his reply, "What do you want, Minhyuk?" Then he stabs a knife onto the table for maximum impact and it takes all of Minhyuk's guts and will to not scamper off in shock. Where the fuck had he pulled that from? Even after so many months spent on a pirate ship dealing with the most unpredictable characters, Minhyuk is still easily frightened by men like the Captain. His entire body tenses up and he can hear his heart pound in his ears but he didn't run like the rude fucker had probably expected him to, so he pushes his luck.

 

He smiles coyly, stealing the knife right out of the Captain's hands and climbing off the table to push the door shut, still facing the other man. The key is eye contact, to really establish himself in the room, to not back down and to not let the Captain's presence consume him. He phrases his next words carefully.

 

"I just thought, Captain, that you could use a listening ear, and maybe a functioning human to share your troubles with."

 

"What's that supposed to mean?" The Captain responds gruffly, narrowing his eyes at him, eyes darting from his face to the knife he held now by his side. The Captain was a lean, powerful man with a scar as deep as a crater running across his nose bride to the side of his ride cheek, a tyrannical king who’s only dream was the next prize and the next hunt, but now, he was definitely playing in Minhyuk's territory. And Minhyuk had the knife.

 

Minhyuk tilts his head, taking measured steps back to the table, and replies, "The tide passes and falls, the storms will blow over, but the fact still remains... You barely have a quartermaster anymore." He curls his toes inside his waterlogged boots, bracing for the impact of a punch that never comes. Instead, the Captain laughs, empty and low, and pushes an accusing finger into Minhyuk's chest. "And you think you can replace him?" Minhyuk grins, as if to say _you think?_ but he still deigns to reply.

 

"Right now, I think... Anyone could."

 

This draws a bigger laugh, bitter and mirthless, and without any warning, the Captain's hands bunch themselves into Minhyuk's shirt and pull, until their faces are inches apart, his hot breath dancing on Minhyuk's nose. Minhyuk almost dies from holding his breath for so long but does not look away for a single second. _Just a bit more..._ The intensity of their eye contact is terrifying, and the way the Captain searches his eyes for any uncertainty is worse, but Minhyuk is more afraid of the way the other man moves closer, leaning, as if they weren't already just fractions of seconds away from each other. Quite frankly, he doesn't know if this is going to work, but it has to. He raises the knife from before and strikes it into the table just an inch away from where the Captain's hand rests, before he could do the deed.

 

_Thank god._

 

The moment breaks, but the spell hasn't. _People are so easy_ , he thinks, willing himself not to sigh in relief. He already knows he got the Captain, hook, line, and... anchor? He walks out of there, no feelings in his jelly legs but the thumping of his heartbeat, praying that whatever the hell that was had worked.

 

_**NOW** _

 

That was last year, two years after Jooheon had been forced to stay at home, and now Minhyuk can barely tear himself from his life on the sea.

 

He loves Jooheon, he does, but life as a pirate was unpredictable. He could be out at sea for months on end for as meagre a pay as several dollars, and still be carted right back out after two days of rest. Jooheon understands, mostly. He had been a pirate for most of his life, after all. But that doesn't mean he appreciates waking up at the break of dawn to see Minhyuk packing in a hurry, rushing painful goodbyes, before heading back off to another hunt, after promising this time would be different.

 

Sometimes they fight, tearful and selfish and drunken, hiding at the furthest edges of their tiny bed, falling asleep to the sound of hurt silence and the desperate wish that everything would be okay by morning. It didn't happen all the time, of course. But it hurt like hell when it did, hearing Jooheon scream angry words at him through a clogged throat and through his tears, then begging him to _stay, please,_ as if he didn't want to, as if he didn't want to always be with Jooheon.

 

It is so hard to stay. And it's so easy to want to come home.

 

It's a common sight to see pirates run off the ship once they dropped anchor, wiping the sweat and salt from their brows and scrambling to unload their prizes. All the while, they'd be inclined in the direction of the brothel up the hill where their damsels and dandies waited for them, desperate to enter the arms (and legs) of their sweet, loving others, convinced that the most important things in their lovers’ lives were to await the return of the water-logged, salt-stinking young men that patronised them. Minhyuk shares their same desperation but lacks the freedom to run off immediately, being bound by duty to check in their bounty for the ship.

 

Minhyuk would get home hours later, jogging past the brothel and the wine-house, past the tents on the beach and the shaggy restaurants, up the hill behind the woods, feeling the exhaustion clog in his throat and his lungs threatening to rip. He'd always run though, until tears welled up in his eyes and until he couldn't stop. He'd run until he fell against the scratched wood of Jooheon's door, panting in spurts and begging to be let in, never really feeling like he had walked in far enough until he was pinned to the bed by the weight of Jooheon's angry kisses.

 

He'd do this every single time.

 

Just earlier that day, he had taken off seconds after signing off on the ship's bounty, skirting past the passers-by and other quartermasters and boatswains, trying to keep to a brisk walk before giving up and breaking into a sprint. He barely felt the gun hitting repeatedly against his thigh as he rushed uphill, dreaming only of Jooheon's hands over his body, begging God to just send him the fuck home already. Even just steps from home he felt like he couldn't have been further away.

 

It's been two months, hunting the English merchant ship, sleeping curled up in a hammock with his fingers reaching for the empty one nearby even though Jooheon hadn't slept in it for ages. Minhyuk loved the sea, he did, could have sunk happily to the seabed with saltwater in his lungs, but he had a home to return to. For _once_ , he did.

 

Once he had arrived home, Jooheon had folded onto him, wrapping his arms around his neck and nuzzling into it. Minhyuk spent the next century dragging his hands all over Jooheon's body, because he could never believe he was home until he had felt all of Jooheon. He was aching, sore and tired all over, and the running hadn't helped either, but kissing Jooheon was like taking off his clothes and entering the shower on the ship for the few minutes he got by himself, only he wasn't alone, and he had this all to himself, and every minute with Jooheon could have been forever.

 

Sometimes he wonders if he had signed his own death sentence when he had become quartermaster. He wonders if his last wish will be to return to this cottage and rest his cheek onto Jooheon's hands again, if he's to be slashed too deep, too unsalvageable, in the middle of the Atlantic ocean a thousand waves away from here. _Stay, please_ , Jooheon always begs because every time Minhyuk walks out of his door and pulls himself up by his rope-burnt hands into the rusty old Dreamer's Defiance, it threatens to never bring him back. _Stay, please_ , he pleads because both of them know the only way it would ever happen would be if Minhyuk couldn't possibly leave anymore, if he suffered a wound just like Jooheon's, if he was to never return to the sea again.

 

They both know he could never do that.

 

That's why the day that he had stalked out of the Captain's chambers, heart beating out of his chest, praying everything would work out, he hadn't thought twice about the consequences beyond that. And why when the old quartermaster called him a coward in front of the crew and dared him to challenge him to his face, he had laughed breathlessly and picked up a sword without hesitation. That’s why he had thrown the body off of the side of the ship later, blood and grime dripping from his chin and hands, Jooheon watching, shell-shocked and amazed from the deck, and hadn’t thought to feel sorry until the next day.

 

It was also because he had recalled in that very moment, the man, the coward who had been last to strike his father: the quartermaster, pushing his way into the swarm of pirates at last when Minhyuk’s father had been on the verge of death, driving a dagger through his neck with a smile on his face.

 

He wondered later that day if the retribution had turned himself into that same man, when the Captain comes out of his chambers and stares emotionlessly at the bloody corpse on the deck, of the man who had stayed for years by his side, and only looks up and smiles knowingly at Minhyuk. He wonders now if he'll turn into the same corpse washed up in a bloody seabank. Another quartermaster doomed for death in the reckless shadow of a tyrant Captain.

 

He supposes he's different from the old quartermaster, though. For one, he has a backbone, and a tongue sharp enough to combat the endless rambling of his Captain. He's enough of his own person for the crew to look at the Captain-Quartermaster pair and decide that they preferred him. He's also fucking terrifying, with a miraculous handle on the ship's inner workings and the inexplicable favour of a thousand other ship captains begging him to defect to their ships. Because he thinks, and he's sure: he's the best quartermaster around, with the eloquence of a scholar and the rage of a monster, and he could convince anyone to do anything for him.

 

But the most striking difference is Jooheon.

 

Although Jooheon was the sailing master, he was also the most feared fighter in all the seven seas, a sword-slinging, teeth-baring scavenger with a high bodycount. He was the best wayfinder, the toughest combatant, and the most solitary pirate. And yet, he loves Minhyuk.

 

Minhyuk is invincible as long as he has Jooheon’s love, as long as Jooheon’s lips belong to his and for as long as he keeps running to Jooheon’s door. He has _love_ … and that’s already a step up from all the other pirates on his crew. With Jooheon’s love, he might as well be the dreamer his pirate ship was named after. He’s different because he has the sea, _and_ a home, and so, so much love in his heart for his Jooheon, and he’d crawl back to shore even if with gashes running down his back and salt in his lungs because he has something to return to. He’d crawl back and fall down at Jooheon’s door and he could never die because Jooheon loves him.

 

Jooheon snores loudly and rolls over to push his face into Minhyuk’s arm and Minhyuk still can’t help but think, that he’s so grateful for the home he’s made with Jooheon.

 

He pulls Jooheon’s head onto his chest, blows out the candle by the bedside, and finally prepares to sleep. He no longer dreams, and he no longer prays, because he knows when he wakes up he’ll have everything he ever wanted pressing a kiss to his salt-chapped lips.

 

 _“_ _Odysseus, on his journey home to Ithaca, was visited by a ghost. The ghost tells him that once he reaches his home, once he slays all his enemies and sets his home in order he must do one last thing before he can rest. The ghost tells him to pick up an oar and walk inland, and keep walking, until somebody mistakes that oar for a shovel. For that would be the place that no man had ever been troubled by the sea. And that’s where he’d find peace.”_

 

_\- Black Sails_

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! i decided to post this just in time for minhyuk's birthday so i hope it was all worth it hehe  
> this is also fic 1/3 of my participation in JoohyukBingo! hope it didn't disappoint :-))
> 
> as always do leave kudos and comments and you can find me @ mongaygay on twitter


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